Service Details

Sunday, 1/20/19 @ 2pm at The Theater for the New City, 155 First Avenue (between 9th and 10th Streets) in the East Village of New York City

Please RSVP through text or call Fran at 347-669-3489

The Story

Charlotte Volage, an award-wining writer and actor in film, theater and television, passed peacefully in her NYC home on January 11th, 2019 at the age of 72. Her passing was due to complications brought on by the re-emergence of cancer after over a year of hospice care. Charlotte is survived by her daughter Sarah, grandson Wyatt, and her siblings and nieces. Her loyal dog, Towee survived her for 9 days and decided to be with Charlotte by passing peacefully on January 20, 2019, the day of Charlotte's memorial service.

She was the oldest of three children and spent her formative years in Naugatuck, CT where she was raised by her mother, father and grandmother. She spent much of her childhood enjoying the outdoors - watching her grandmother take care of the animals they had in the backyard, fishing with her father on the Connecticut sound and enjoying sunny summers at the beach. From a very early age she developed a passion for the performing arts and the stage. In high school, she began writing poetry and exploring different ways to express herself artistically.

At Wagner College she successfully completed her bachelors degree, majoring in English and minoring in Visual Arts. After college she worked as a social worker for Connecticut family protective services, but left the profession after a few years when she found herself getting too emotionally involved with the families, finding it difficult to tear children away from her parents. She then was awarded a full scholarship at Penn State University for the doctorate program in Sociology, but didn’t complete the degree.

She accepted a summer fellowship at the renowned Westport Country Playhouse, where she worked on exciting productions that got optioned for transfer to the Broadway stage. Soon thereafter she decided to move to NYC to pursue her passion for acting and the theater. Her first professional theatre experience occurred on the national tour of That Championship Season starring Danny Aiello and academy award winner Broderick Crawford. She also worked along side Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, Marsha Norman on Lunch with Ginger and legendary director Elia Kazan on one of his final directorial projects The Chain (produced by Cheryl Crawford). She worked on the original production of the Pulitzer Prize finalist Old Wicked Songs written by Jon Marans.

On screen, her acting work include films that have been screened at film festivals (Cannes, Zurich, and Ascona) as well as television shows NBC's 30 Rock, ABC's Six Degrees of Separation, and FOX's New Amsterdam.

Charlotte spent decades honing her acting craft and never stopped studying and working towards perfection. Over the years she studied with many different acting teachers including Sande Shurin, Ruth Nerken, Larry Conroy, George Morrison, Ruth Berkowitz, David Cadyn, Tom Grail, and finally with Matt at the Matthew Corozine Studio. She has performed with Obie-award winning theatre companies such as Mabou Mines and The Threshold Theatre. In addition to her acting work, she was an avid painter and writer. She wrote and performed a number of one-woman shows, which were presented at P.S.122, Dixon Place and the Joyce Theater Annex. She recently finished her full-length screenplay called The Silver Sword. She also wrote the one-act play My Golden Girl which received numerous productions and included in the 45th Annual Festival of One Acts in 2018 . During her last year of life, she completed 5 plays and was working on a rewrite of her still un-produced full-length play The Cracked Castle up until a few weeks prior to her passing.

In the early 80s, she met Robert Bellin while out to dinner with a close friend. They immediately hit it off when they realized they grew up a few towns apart in Connecticut. They married and had their beloved only daughter, Sarah.

A renaissance woman who in addition to her work on stage and in theatre and film, also trained and worked professionally as a graphic designer for various corporate events, companies and organizations. Charlotte had a video editing studio in her apartment, where she worked with documentary filmmakers and created videos for private and corporate occasions. She was able to teach herself anything, and during the computer boom of the 90s taught herself how to use graphics programs and create websites.

An incredibly determined woman who never gave up on her passions. Her love of performing and the theatre did not get derailed because of her illness. Despite her health challenges in the past few years, she always found opportunities to perform on stage. She is probably one of the only hospice patients to ever have performed in 3 different plays and get her own play produced professionally in NYC. Recently she was in the Dream-up Festival playing Henrik Ibsen in "Eleanora Dusa Dies in Pittsburgh" and most recently performed on Halloween at Theater for the New City as the Starfish Queen in a political piece about pollution and clean water.

Aside from her family and artist life, she is also a member of the Noho District of Soka Gakkai International (SGI), an organization dedicated to the spreading of world peace through culture and education based on the teachings of Nichiren Daishonin’s Buddhism. Charlotte enjoyed chanting "Nam Myoho Renge Kyo", having encouraging dialogues with other members in the neighborhood and showing off photos of her daughter and grandson during her final months of life. Even when she couldn't attend SGI meetings in person towards the end of her life, she would participate via Face Time to share her experiences and undeniable fighting spirit.

In lieu of flowers, the family asks that donations be made in the memory of Charlotte Volage to THE ACTORS FUND (https://actorsfund.org/)